A woman in her 50s received a phone call from a school’s administrative office saying that her kid injured his or her head pretty badly and that she needs to send $8,900 (10 million KRW) immediately for surgery. She sent the corresponding money without any doubt since the person on the other line listed her kid’s name, her phone number, and the name of her kid’s school. However, when she found out that this was a voice-phishing scam after confirming with corresponding hospital and school, it was too late for her to retrieve the money as it was taken out already by scammers.
In the past, voice-phishing scams involved a method of imitating themselves as loan consultants or agents through phone calls or text messages and requesting money.
According to Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), amount of damages from such voice-phishing scams increased from $119 million (134.4 billion KRW) in 2016 to $161 million (180.8 billion KRW) in 2017 and to $209 million (235.4 billion KRW) between January and October of 2018.
However, these scams recently started to utilize messengers, illegal financial websites, mobile applications, and simple remittance services. Just like the case above, some tried to imitate themselves as employees from an administration office of a school that kids attend or they say that phone bills are overdue.
Number of voice-phishing scams involving overdue phone bills is also rising. These scams impersonate themselves as police or employees from telecommunication companies and notify victims that their phones will be disconnected due to high phone bills resulting from personal information leakage. During this process, scammers obtain information from victims through ARS and extort money from victims.
As number of voice-phishing scams involving new methods is on rise, amount of damages and number of cases of scams involving messengers, illegal websites, and applications increased greatly compared to last year. While amount of damages from scams involving messengers between January and October of 2017 was about $3.46 million (3.9 billion KRW), amount of damages between January and October of 2018 was $12.8 million (14.4 billion KRW). Number of scams involving illegal websites and applications also increased from 433 cases to 1,416 cases during same periods.
Number of voice-phishing scams involving simple remittance services is also on rise due to rapid growth of simple remittance market. Amount of damages from scams involving four major simple remittance service providers between January and October of 2018 was about $32,000 (36 million KRW) and it was responsible for 0.01% of damages from entire voice-phishing scams. However, FSS explained that there is a chance that amount of damages from simple remittance services can grow in the future as simple remittance market continues to grow.
“Voice-phishing has become more advanced as it is able to obtain detailed personal information and impersonate an administrative office from a school.” said a representative for FSS. “Financial users must pay careful attention as number of new cases of voice-phishing involving new methods is on rise due to new financial markets such as simple remittance market.”
Staff Reporter Park, Yoonho | yuno@etnews.com